A Former French President Gives a Voice to Obstinate Russian Sympathies

PARIS — Nicolas Sarkozy, the previous French president, was as soon as generally known as “Sarko the American” for his love of free markets, freewheeling debate and Elvis. Of late, nevertheless, he has appeared extra like “Sarko the Russian,” whilst President Vladimir V. Putin’s ruthlessness seems extra evident than ever.

In interviews coinciding with the publication of a memoir, Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, mentioned that reversing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “illusory,” dominated out Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union or NATO as a result of it should stay “neutral,” and insisted that Russia and France “need each other.”

“People tell me Vladimir Putin isn’t the same man that I met. I don’t find that convincing. I’ve had tens of conversations with him. He is not irrational,” he advised Le Figaro. “European interests aren’t aligned with American interests this time,” he added.

His statements, to the newspaper in addition to the TF1 tv community, had been uncommon for a former president in that they’re profoundly at odds with official French coverage. They provoked outrage from the Ukrainian ambassador to France and condemnation from a number of French politicians, together with President Emmanuel Macron.

The remarks additionally underscored the energy of the lingering pockets of pro-Putin sympathy that persist in Europe. Those voices have been muffled since Europe cast a unified stand towards Russia, by means of successive rounds of financial sanctions towards Moscow and army help to Kyiv.

The risk they could develop louder seems to have risen as Ukraine’s counteroffensive has proved underwhelming to this point. “The fact the counteroffensive has not worked up to now means a very long war of uncertain outcome,” mentioned Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist at Sciences Po, a college in Paris. “There is the risk of political and financial weariness among Western powers that would weaken Ukraine.”

In France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, not even the evident atrocities of the Russian onslaught towards Ukraine have stripped away the affinity for Russia historically discovered on the far proper and much left. This additionally extends at instances to institution politicians like Mr. Sarkozy, who really feel some ideological kinship with Moscow, blame NATO growth eastward for the warfare, or eye financial achieve.

From Germany, the place former Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is essentially the most distinguished Putin supporter, to Italy the place a former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement has spoken out towards arms shipments to Ukraine, some politicians appear loyal of their help for Mr. Putin.

France, like Germany, has at all times had a big variety of Russophiles and admirers of Mr. Putin, no matter his amply illustrated readiness to remove opponents — most lately, it appears, his someday sidekick turned upstart rival, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who led a short mutiny two months in the past.

The sympathizers vary from Mr. Sarkozy’s Gaullist middle proper, with its simmering resentment of American energy in Europe and admiration for robust leaders, to Marine Le Pen’s far proper, enamored of Mr. Putin’s stand for household, religion and fatherland towards a supposedly decadent West. The excessive left, in a hangover from Soviet instances, additionally has a lingering sympathy for Russia that the 18-month-long warfare has not eradicated.

Still Mr. Sarkozy’s outspokenness was putting, as was his unequivocal pro-Russian tone and provocative timing.

“Gaullist equidistance between the United States and Russia is an old story, but what Sarkozy said was shocking,” Ms. Bacharan mentioned. “We are at war and democracies stand with Ukraine, while the autocracies of the world are with Mr. Putin.”

The obstinacy of the French proper’s emotional bond with Russia owes a lot to a recurrent Gallic great-power itch and to the resentment of the extent of American postwar dominance, evident within the present French-led quest for European “strategic autonomy.” Even President Macron, a centrist, mentioned as lately as 2019 that “Russia is European, very profoundly so, and we believe in this Europe that stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

With Mr. Putin, Russian rapprochement has additionally been about cash. Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally social gathering took a Russian mortgage; former Prime Minister François Fillon joined the boards of two Russian corporations (earlier than quitting final yr in protest on the warfare); and Mr. Sarkozy himself has been below investigation since 2021 over a €3 million, or about $3.2 million, contract with a Russian insurance coverage firm.

This monetary reference to Moscow has undermined Mr. Sarkozy’s credibility, however not made him much less vocal.

He urged Mr. Macron, with whom he recurrently confers, to “renew dialogue” with Mr. Putin, referred to as for the “ratification” of Crimea’s annexation by means of an internationally supervised referendum, and mentioned referendums must also be organized within the jap Donbas area to settle how land there may be divided between Ukraine and Russia.

Rather than occupied territory, the Donbas is clearly negotiable territory to Mr. Sarkozy; as for Crimea, it’s a part of Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, the previous Russian president and now virulent assailant of the West, hailed Mr. Sarkozy’s “good sense” in opposing those that present missiles “to the Nazis of Kyiv.”

Commenting on Mr. Sarkozy within the each day Libération, the journalist Serge July wrote: “Realism suggests that the meager results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive have suddenly redrawn the Russia map. Supporters who had remained discreet are finding their way back to the microphones. One recalls the words of Edgar Faure, a star of the Fourth Republic: ‘It’s not the weather vane that turns but the wind.’”

If the West’s aim was to leverage main army good points by means of the Ukrainian counteroffensive into a good Ukrainian negotiating place with Moscow — as urged earlier this yr by senior officers in Washington and Europe — then that situation appears to be like distant for the second.

This, in flip, might place larger strain over time on Western unity and resolve because the U.S. presidential election looms subsequent yr.

Mr. Putin, having apparently shored up his 23-year-old rule by means of the killing of Mr. Prigozhin, could also be enjoying for time. It was not for nothing that Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who clashed with Donald J. Trump over the previous president’s calls for that Mr. Raffensperger change the outcomes of the 2020 election, was bizarrely included in an inventory of individuals banned from Russia that was revealed in May.

As nods and winks to Mr. Trump go, this was fairly conspicuous.

Mr. Macron responded to Mr. Sarkozy by saying their positions had been completely different and that France “recognizes neither the annexation by Russian of Ukrainian territory, nor the results of parodies of elections that were organized.” Several French politicians expressed outrage at Mr. Sarkozy’s views.

Over the course of the warfare, Mr. Macron’s place itself has developed from outreach to Putin, within the type of quite a few cellphone calls with him and an announcement that Russia shouldn’t be “humiliated,” towards robust help of the Ukrainian trigger and of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

There have been echoes of Mr. Sarkozy’s stance elsewhere in Europe, even when Western resolve in standing with Ukraine doesn’t seem to have basically shifted.

Mr. Schröder, Germany’s former chancellor and, in retirement, a Russian gasoline lobbyist near Mr. Putin, attended a Victory Day celebration on the Russian embassy in Berlin in May. Tino Chrupalla, the co-chairman of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, or AfD, as it’s identified in Germany, was additionally current.

A major minority in Germany’s Social Democratic social gathering retains some sympathy for Moscow. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has overseen army help to Ukraine value billions of {dollars} and views the Russian invasion as a historic “turning point” that obliges German to wean itself of its post-Nazi hesitation over the usage of pressure, confronted heckles of “warmonger” as he gave a speech to the social gathering.

This month, in a reversal, Mr. Scholz’s authorities retreated from making a authorized dedication to spending two % of GDP on protection yearly, a NATO goal it had beforehand embraced, Reuters reported. Disquiet over army moderately than social spending is rising in Europe because the warfare in Ukraine grinds on.

Many folks in what was previously East Germany, a part of the Soviet imperium till shortly earlier than German unification in 1990, look favorably on Moscow. A ballot carried out in May discovered that 73 % of West Germans backed sanctions towards Russia, in contrast with 56 % of these residing within the East. The AfD has efficiently exploited this division by calling itself the peace social gathering.

“I could not have imagined that German tanks would once again head in the direction of Russia,” mentioned Karsten Hilse, one of many extra voluble Russia sympathizers inside the AfD, alluding to tanks supplied to Ukraine.

In Italy, essentially the most vocal supporter of Mr. Putin was Silvio Berlusconi, the four-time prime minister who died a couple of months in the past. Giorgia Meloni, who as prime minister leads a far-right authorities, has held to a pro-Ukrainian line, regardless of the sympathies of far-right actions all through Europe for Mr. Putin.

Mr. Conte, the previous Italian prime minister, declared lately that “the military strategy is not working,” even because it takes a devastating monetary toll.

In France, Ségolène Royal, a distinguished former socialist candidate for the presidency who has denounced Ukrainian claims of Russian atrocities as “propaganda,” introduced this week that she meant to steer a united left-wing group in European Parliament elections subsequent yr. It was one other small signal of a possible resurgence of pro-Russian sentiment.

Mr. Putin has used frozen conflicts to his benefit in Georgia and elsewhere. If there is no such thing as a victory for both aspect in Ukraine earlier than the U.S. election in November 2024, “the outcome of the war will be decided in the United States,” Ms. Bacharan mentioned.

Reporting was contributed by Christopher F. Schuetze in Berlin, Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle in Paris and Gaia Pianigiani in Rome.